


His Second Son

by allthemeadowswide



Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 05:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15942956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthemeadowswide/pseuds/allthemeadowswide
Summary: “You know, I never thought it would be like this.” / Bill visits Jack's grave.





	His Second Son

**Author's Note:**

> This was prompted to me on Tumblr by an anonymous person, and their prompt was the first sentence of this story. I hope you enjoy! Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined. :) You can also find a few little notes [here.](https://abigailscafe.tumblr.com/post/177909587743/sentence-prompt-for-jack-bill-you-know-i)

* * *

 

“You know, I never thought it would be like this.” His words hit the air and shattered the silence. They sounded strong—normal, not a hint of weakness about them. He liked to think he was past all that by a season. The winter months had been surprisingly, perhaps disappointingly, mild.

Bill spent them wringing his hands and pacing, activities that reminded him of AJ locked up in her cell. _“Sorry,”_ she’d said. _“I’m just not used to—”_

He always cut the memory off with a mental shake. Even in the relative safety of his own mind, that path didn’t feel safe. But nothing did, anymore, did it? Sure, the AJ path wasn’t sad, wasn’t a tragedy, not like the others were…yet.

He knew enough about how prisons worked to know not to think of her.

But it wasn’t better thinking of the things he’d already lost. Thinking about them wouldn’t bring them back, wouldn’t change anything. Still, he found himself at Jack’s grave and felt the wrongness of his death just as keenly this early spring morning as he had the night Elizabeth received the news. So much for being past it.

It was only training. Injuries happened sometimes, but death? It was so rare Bill hadn’t even considered the possibility. _It wasn’t supposed to be this way_ was such an easy thought to have, but it wasn’t exactly correct, and it definitely wasn’t fair. Maybe because it had still happened—or maybe because in life nothing was _supposed_ to happen; things just _did_.

He considered his own life for a moment: he wasn’t supposed to marry someone for convenience; Martin wasn’t supposed to die; Nora wasn’t supposed to leave him just when he needed her most. But all of those things _had_ happened, and he couldn’t help but feel that they’d all played on one another to culminate in a personal tragedy so potent that he could never move past it, not fully, even though sometimes he wanted nothing more than to leave it all behind.

So no, Jack wasn’t _supposed_ to have died, but he had.

And once again, Bill was one of the people picking up the pieces, trying to make sense of something he knew he’d never be able to make sense of.

“I thought,” he began, slowly, crouching by the headstone, “that it would be me in there, first. That I would see you married with a family of your own, with Elizabeth, and I wouldn’t have to see someone else I care about—” His voice cracked on the words and he felt something like anger at himself wash over him. He could talk about Martin without falling to pieces. He’d raised Martin like his own son, held him at both his birth and death. Jack wasn’t even his, had probably never thought of him as a second father. It wasn’t fair to feel this way about losing him. But he did.

“I don’t think it should have been me instead,” he managed to say after a time, when the stillness in the air felt stifling and his knees ached, “but…I wish it had been.” He knew Jack would understand the sentiment, was possibly the only one who could. Bill could count the amount of people who would be deeply affected by his own death, and it wasn’t a long list; maybe he was mistaken in thinking there was even a list at all.

It would have spared so many people for it to have been Bill, instead. Especially Elizabeth. She didn’t deserve to have everything ripped away from her like that. Bill hadn’t been much help to her. He knew what it was like to lose a son, a little bit about what it might be like to lose two, but he couldn’t begin to understand what Elizabeth was dealing with. He’d never felt that way about anyone, and at his age he doubted he ever would.

He imagined it was different, but just as painful; like losing a part of yourself you never expected to have to let go of.

It wasn’t so much that Bill wanted to lament the injustice of it all, of life, because of course that was pointless. Life did go on, in its own way, and the upset of a single man or woman would never be enough to stop it in its tracks. But there was some relief in expressing a sentiment to Jack that he couldn’t tell anyone else.

Even in his own head Bill struggled to concoct a scenario that involved him training new recruits instead of Jack. He’d have to go back to the day he quit being a Mountie, and he’d have to remain one, have to take orders and go where he was told and hope that when they needed someone with experience that they would come to him instead of Jack—that Jack would live through the in-fighting in the Northern Territories without Bill’s interference to bring him home for Christmas, without his advice from the months that led up to his leaving, that everything would work out exactly as he wanted it to.

And in the end, Jack would get his overcrowded new home full of children, and Bill would get to see Martin again.

He supposed he could try it a hundred times and the outcome would never be ideal, but the sentiment remained.

“You were like a son to me,” he forced out, voice sounding as if he were about to cry. “I would have done _anything_ —” The thought remained incomplete aloud, but only because there were too many variables to choose from. He would have done anything to spare him, to protect him, to take his fate instead. That was his job, wasn’t it? Having these feelings? Jack remembered his real father and had never needed another, had probably never seen Bill as anything more than a friend of sorts, a mentor. But maybe Bill had needed another son, someone to help heal his heart, and he’d found that in Jack.

But the problem with sentiment was exactly that: a declaration and desire to act weren’t an action unto themselves.

He wanted to think he would have done anything to protect Martin, to save Jack, but what _had_ he done? Nothing.

Or at least not enough.

Their graves told him that much.

Hindsight was hard to swallow. With it, he could see a hundred ways he might have altered the course of Martin’s life, of Jack’s, for the better. But now both were cold and buried and missed. He wouldn’t pretend the ache he felt for Jack was as strong or as strangulating as the one Elizabeth felt, or the one Charlotte did, but just like theirs, his would never go away. He knew enough of loss and death to feel certain about that.

His fingers brushed over the headstone, still damp from the morning dew, and when his voice came again, it was in a whisper.

“I never thought I’d see you buried, too.”

His old superiors, maybe. Some of the older members of the Hope Valley community. But Jack? Jack pulled through pneumonia. Jack lived through skirmishes that took the lives of most of the other officers. Jack was strong and healthy and quick with a reassuring smile.

But he had always been eager to help, to do the right thing, to put his best foot forward. Of course he’d died a hero. He’d lived like one.

Bill couldn’t say the same about himself. Like he’d told AJ what felt like ages ago, he wasn’t an honorable man; he was just better than most. Usually that was enough for him.

Who was he going to see buried next? How much loss was he expected to take? Would he have to see Elizabeth go, too? The baby? Abigail? Dottie? Cody? Would word of Frank’s death come into town next week? Next month? Next year? And what about AJ, in a prison surrounded by men who might not be even a little decent?

The thought made him feel ill. He didn’t like the idea of seeing anyone else die, of having to attend anyone’s funeral—not even Henry Gowen’s, and everyone knew how he felt about that man.

It didn’t seem fair that people like Henry got to live, got lucky, and people like Jack…didn’t.

He shook his head, reaching out to adjust the flowers he’d brought—mostly picked by the children, some from Elizabeth, a few from Abigail, a lot from Lee and Rosemary. He’d taken up half the stagecoach with them in a big pail of water and hadn’t cared a bit how ridiculous he looked.

They looked nice now, color spread across the dreary gravesite, grass just barely peeking through in uneven patches. It would be a few years before it matched the older graves, before it blended in. In a way, Bill found that comforting, like it was permission to keep grieving.

He cleared his throat. “Elizabeth wanted to come, for your birthday, but she’s in no condition to travel… And you know Abigail and Rosemary…” He let something like a laugh escape. “They’re taking care of her. I will, too, when I get back. We all will. You wanted her to have that house and she will. I just…” He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, almost ashamed when it didn’t remain steady, “I wish she wasn’t going to be in it all alone.”

But there was no use dwelling on wishes and what-ifs. The past wouldn’t change. It remained steadfast—a comfort, Bill supposed, in its own way.

The visit didn’t feel complete, but the right words refused to come, the sun was getting high, and he had a stage to catch if he was going to make it back to Hope Valley before dark. His knees ached when he straightened them, another reminder that the good died young and the better-than-most had to watch it happen and then spend the rest of their lives wondering what more they could have done.

“She’s taken care of, Jack,” he managed, not sure if it was what needed to be said in the moment or not. Somehow, goodbye didn’t feel right. There would be a next time; there always was with Martin, and he suspected there would be with Jack, too.  So he said, “I promise,” instead, cemented it and made it personal. He wouldn’t let Elizabeth down. He couldn’t.

 _You won’t be seeing her for a long time_ , he thought at the man who had become his second son, and smiled, fingers digging in the pocket of his coat for a handkerchief. If the stagecoach was empty on the way home, he’d need it.

“Hang in there, Jack,” he said, his voice almost level, his mind feeling just a little clearer.

Purpose had always done that for him—had always lit the path.

“Until next time.”


End file.
